Fantasy Studio Project presented the work of seven Korean contemporary artists, who each had been provided with a studio within A Foundation’s complex of converted factory and warehouse spaces for the period of the Liverpool Biennial 2008. Rather than literally reconstruct the individual artists’ permanent studio, each created a ‘fantasy studio’, which attempts to re-interpret the exhibition space as a location where practice ‘bleeds and blends’ with the venue itself.

Combining elements of a number of traditional exposition formats: the group show, the residency, the performance, the national showcase; Fantasy Studio Project attempted to explode the confinements of each, generating a new set of problems and intricacies. Through this process, Fantasy Studio Project explored the changing nature of the studio within artistic practice, and addressed the alienating effect on audiences of transposing ideas generated in one culture onto another.

Kyungwoo Chun presented his Thousands project. Three years in the making, this work brought together one thousand photographic portraits of individuals from the Chinese mainland, all of whom shared the same surname as the artist, which literally translates as “a thousand”. Chu will also show a new participatory work, A Thousand Answers.

Yeondoo Jung’s work explored ideas around urban dislocation, memory and fantasy. The video he is exhibiting in Liverpool, Nostalgia, depicted a series of imagined idyllic landscapes, constructed in a studio. Alongside this work, Jung showed documentary footage revealing the making process.

Yongbaek Lee presented stage props and costumes from the production of his video Angel Soldier, which explored a variety of both seen and unseen conflicts in the world. Lee’s other works included mirrors that appear to crack when the viewer stared into them.

Junebum Park’s video, Hypermarket 4, is viewed from the artist’s eye perspective, as he created architectural alterations to a static shot of Berlin’s Hamburger Bahnhof museum, transforming it into a supermarket. For Fantasy Studio Project, Park produced a new video work, in which A Foundation’s Furnace gallery space received a makeover.

Hyun-Mi Yoo injects doubt into our reading of three-dimensional space in a two-dimensional image. Yoo paints directly onto domestic space, adding objects and shadows and then presents the work as a photograph. In Liverpool, the artist made new work that includedthe production process.

Young In Hong’s work attempted to reinterpret the cityscape - monolithic architecture, statues of historical and contemporary figures and so on. Hong’s commissioned embroidery worked incorporate a number of cultural and political icons from the city.

Sookyung Yee produced a life-size sculpture entitled Very Best Statue. Yee canvassed over 100 people in Liverpool, asking them to complete forms that offered choices from a range of physical attributes. Yee has combined the most popular results to produce the city’s ideal figure. ​